Coming of Age: An introduction to the NEW worldwide web

I was facilitating a Web 2.0 seminar yesterday for Primary School teachers and none had come across the term before. The fog was rolling in it seemed. However, when asked how they currently encouraged collaboration and communication in the classroom, they came up with a host of ideas and techniques. Asked to dream about what they would like to offer their pupils in the future in terms of collaborative and communicative opportunities, they were creative and imaginative. We then started talking about how there were tools freely available that use the internet as a platform that could offer their pupils the ‘future’ experiences now. The mist was definitely lifting.

As a result we are going to set up a small-scale experiment using some of innovative online tools to see how they might impact teaching and learning. This is what Web 2.0 looks like on the ground.

‘Coming of Age: An introduction to the NEW worldwide web’ is a book that will provide the textual equivalent to my experience outlined above. It will help educators see the value of Web 2.0 for what is it – a ever-growing set of online tools that in the hands of teachers, could positively impact the teaching and learning process.

Coming of Age should go some way to de-mystifying the present hype around Web 2.0 for education. It provides practical insights from a range of educators who have been exploring how Web 2.0 technology can be used in schools, particularly as a way of supporting social, collaborative learning. The differing perspectives and contextual viewpoints of the 14 authors mean that readers will receive a practical flavour of many different tools. However, the real beauty is that readers will be able to take the ideas and tools to explore, share and customise their own recipes for creativity.

Proud to be one of the contributors, I would like to thank Terry Freedman, the architect and builder of this project, for the hours and hours of work that he has put in behind the scenes. From the outset, Terry’s view was that this should be a free download to encourage the widest possible audience. You can view the table of contents and list of contributors here.

Feel free to download the book by clicking on the picture below and publicise the link to anyone else who might be interested.

(PDF 2MB)